


If You Can Hold On

by eternaleponine



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Others might be surprised by the truth of Clint and Natasha's relationship behind closed doors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Can Hold On

It might have surprised others to find out, given what they knew – or thought they knew – about her job and how she did it, that Natasha and Clint didn't fuck like rabbits. By her definition of the word, they rarely _fucked_ at all. 

(For the record, Natasha defined fucking as sex with no expectation of any kind of emotional payoff. Fucking was a tool, and sometimes a weapon. Fucking was what you did when all you wanted was to get off and get out.)

When they fucked, she was always on top. Always. But it was rare, because that wasn't what they were about, and it never had been.

What had happened in Budapest had been a long time coming, and Natasha knew that it had mostly been her fighting against it, even though the battle had been entirely internal. She'd been careful, she thought, to keep it from affecting things between them, but she suspected that he'd known all along. 

He'd known, and he hadn't pushed. He'd waited, patient in a way even she couldn't muster, and when he'd finally seen the crack, the chink in her armor, it had taken only the smallest nudge and she'd toppled.

She'd been afraid, fleetingly, that one or both of them would regret it in the morning. She'd tried to prepare herself, as sleep dragged her down, for the possibility that when they woke they would realize that they'd made a mistake. It had been hard to make herself believe, though, with his arms around her and his chest pressed to her back, so that the rhythm of his breathing had become her own.

They hadn't talked about it in the morning, but it wasn't as if they were pretending it hadn't happened. That wasn't the feeling she got, anyway. It had felt more like... like they'd finally figured out the way it was meant to be. 

The trouble was that they had to go back to real life the next day, back to S.H.I.E.L.D. and everything (and everyone) that went along with it. She hadn't known what that would mean; old habits die hard (she should know) and maybe they would just fall back into their usual patterns and it would just be a (bittersweet) memory.

She should have known better. She should have had more faith in him, if not in herself. After they'd been debriefed, which had eaten up most of the day, and found food, they'd both headed for their rooms. Clint had caught her in the hall, stopped her with a light touch, and leaned in to whisper, "Your place or mine?"

His grin was irresistible. "Come on," she said, smiling back without even realizing it. He'd taken her hand and she couldn't remember the last time anyone had done that. She suspected her age had probably been in the single digits and crossing a street had been involved.

When they were in the same place at the same time, they slept together more often than they slept apart. Often as not, that was all it was: sleep. Two bodies curled into and around each other, finding comfort and safety that neither of them had ever truly felt before in all of the places that their bodies touched. 

They knew each other inside and out. She couldn't claim to know everything that went on in his head (or his heart), but she knew more than most, just as he knew her. But she _could_ claim to know the place on his sides that tickled no matter how gently or firmly it was touched, and the spot on his neck that, if kissed, made him literally weak in the knees. She knew his scars, and the places wehre he carried tension when he was stressed. She knew that he liked her lotion that smelled like almonds, so she always used that when she rubbed his hands and wrists.

It might have surprised others to know that they were not exhibitionists, and they were not working their way through the Kama Sutra. They kept their private life private, behind closed and locked doors, and they were really pretty vanilla, actually.

She liked being able to see his face. It wasn't a trust thing; she trusted him with her life and had almost from the moment he'd saved her by holding his fire, and then pulling her, injured, out of a situation gone pear-shaped. No, she just liked to see his eyes, and all the things he couldn't hide when it was just them, stripped naked literally and figuratively and breathing in each other's breath. She'd never asked, but she wondered sometimes if he could see right through her too.

They rarely fucked. Mostly they had sex, for all kinds of reasons. To relieve stress. Just for fun. For comfort, for connection, because it was the only way sometimes they could know for sure that they weren't alone.

She could tell when he needed her, when a kiss and a cuddle wouldn't be enough. It was in the lines between his eyebrows, the set of his jaw, the way his shoulders didn't quite settle. It was in the way he treated her like glass, like she might break if he touched her. She'd had to show him that she wasn't, she wouldn't, even if fingers gripped a little too hard and kisses involved teeth and left her lips swollen. She'd had to show him that when everything else was falling apart and going to hell, she would be there. She could be his rock, his anchor, if he'd let her.

Because that's exactly what he would, and did, do for her if and when the roles were reversed.

They rarely fucked. They often had sex. Sometimes, though she cringed at the cliché, they made love. 

They never used the word. They'd never said it... at least not out loud when the other could actually hear. She'd whispered it into his sleeping ear once or twice, and suspected he might have done the same. But she didn't need to hear it. Actions spoke louder than words, and with those he'd told her loud and clear a thousand times over, in bed and otherwise.

But there was no other way to describe it when the end result ceased to matter because there was nothing more than the moment. The whole world narrowed to hands and lips and skin. The press of bones, the softness of flesh, the velvet of freshly cut hair at the back of his neck and the sauna-heat of his breath on her cheek. Long fingers cupping the back of her skull, cradling it, or tracing over her curves like he wanted to memorize them, commit them to muscle memory, so that his body remembered hers always, bone deep.

It _was_ possible, she'd learned. When she was alone, she could recall with perfect clarity the way he felt, and sometimes that was what got her through the night. (And then sometimes it still wasn't enough, and those were dark nights that never seemed to end.)

There was no other word for it, for the kind of coming together that penetrated so deep there was no him or her anymore, just them. None that she knew of, anyway, in any language.

It might have surprised others to know how little of what they had was about the body and how much was about the soul.

Or it might not have surprised them at all.


End file.
